The puppies ate their first real food today to celebrate being three weeks old. It was ground-up puppy food (Orijen), goat’s milk Esbilac and minced tripe. It smelled horrible to humans and irresistible to dogs (Nina, Rakki and Tish were sitting by the baby gate crying and barking and sniffing as hard as they could).
Here is nearly four minutes of puppies eating real food for the first time (they are completely crashed out now, full tummies will do that!):
Aniston
Beals
Connelly
I am Connelly, hear me roar! (or yawn)
Connelly
Donnelly
Esposito and Beals
Noms
More noms
NOMS!
Om nom nom
Esposito and Connelly
They are three weeks old today (already!). They have some different toys to play with, and they woke me up at 4 AM being complete hooligans, barking at each other, crashing into things, growling…
Weights today (they are all over a kilogram today. Beals was the last to break a kilo, but she did so today with a bullet! She was the smallest gainer yesterday, weighing in at only 986 grams, and the biggest gainer today):
Connelly is back to being the lightest today, but he was heavier than Beals yesterday. He’ll get some extra today. He’s active and thriving, just little. It does tend to even out over time, but I like to make sure nobody falls too far behind, so what I tend to see is the slow gainers become the big gainers and the big gainers slow down.
They will get their first real food later on today! Video will be taken!
I cannot believe they are 20 days old already! Three weeks tomorrow!
Their microchips have arrived from Canada (I use the CKC-approved ISO chips). They won’t actually get implanted until they’re 7 weeks old (Stephanie does it for me and she gives them a buffered local anesthetic so they don’t feel it, it’s a huge needle!), but they’re here and ready!
I sent in their litter registration to the AKC last week, I haven’t done a frozen semen breeding registration before so I wanted to make sure it got there nice and early in case there are hold ups.
Finally, here is your dose of cute for today, Beals and Aniston playing with each other, then trying to wake up their brother Connelly to play at the end:
I Dremeled everybody’s nails tonight for the first time. The puppies are remarkably bigger and their nails are sharp, Nina got a scratch on her eyelid from one of them, and since they all have their eyes open now (therefore at risk for scratching each other) and their nails have hardened up…I figured it was time to introduce the Dremel. I’ve clipped their nails several times, but that still leaves a sharp edge, plus the earlier you start things, the sooner they get used to them.
I was VERY pleasantly surprised. I did their nails at feeding time (Nina had just finished nursing them so they were all in milk comas, and I was topping them up with the bottle of formula). The boys were uniformly awesome, they all just nursed on my fingers and were very mellow about the monster buzzing their feet, they seemed to care more about being moved around than the Dremeling. The girls had more of an opinion about it, but were really also pretty good – some squeaking and token attempts to escape, but the bottle o’formula had mighty power and they decided that if there was FOOD involved, it couldn’t be all that bad.
Pictures from 8/24
The milk bar is open (look how big they are compared to Nina!)
Esposito gets a cuddle
…so does Donnelly…
…Connelly too.
Beals in the “off” position.
Aniston making “Jazz hands”
Beals
Milk coma
Donnelly
Beals telling Connelly a secret
The two big boys are over a kilo now!
This weekend they will eat their first real food.
Weights this morning are:
The puppies have just started actually playing with each other and with their toys! Jim snapped some pictures and I got some video.
Aniston planning The Great Escape
How cute are they?
Almost….
Dude…brush your teeth! (oh wait, you don’t HAVE teeth yet)
Esposito and Donnelly
Esposito and Donnelly again – bitey!
Jaw wrestling already!
Just since yesterday they have started coming over now when they see you’re beside the box (their vision is getting better every day), and they are also starting to wag their tails! They are still little Mr. Magoos, but you can tell that they are starting to understand what their eyes are telling them now. They were wagging at Tish and Rakki earlier today, and they wag at Nina like CRAZY. Up until yesterday, their tails didn’t seem to be wagging on purpose, but now it really does seem like they have started talking with their tails.
17 days old (the girls are on their backs)
It’s a beautiful warm day here today, so we celebrated being 17 days old by going outside in the puppy pen on the deck for a little while. Big dogs Rakki and Tish came and said hello to us, and we wagged at them as best we could. We liked Outside for a bit, but then we wanted our mom and the safety of the puppy box again! On the plus side, we know how to howl when we are worried! All that fresh air tuckered us out.
Connelly outside
Esposito outside
L-R: Donnelly, Esposito, Beals, Aniston, Connelly